The Starter Wage

I’m just gonna float this on out. Haven’t heard it out there in that Matrix-like level of reality known as the Mainstream Media. Or any media, for that matter. If it’s been addressed or proposed somewhere by someone else some time ago and it’s flown straight by me, forgive my lapse of attention.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this “raise-the-minimum-wage-to-$15-an-hour” nonsense and came up with an idea. Now, please don’t get offended, but it seems to me that logical, rational thinking people can understand that when costs go up, demand goes down. The more expensive something is, the fewer people will want to pay for it. Labor is a cost to business. When government mandates a minimum cost and then raises it, businesses will look for other means to fulfill the demand they once had for that labor when that labor was at a lower cost. Such as automation, as we’re seeing some fast food restaurants experiment with.

Common sense. Or, better yet, self-interest. It has nothing to do with “fairness”, if one defines “fairness” as equality of results. A market of buyers and sellers all looking out for their own self-interests yields an efficient marketplace. “Efficiency” as defined as equality of opportunity. Yet a third of the general public out there won’t understand that line of reasoning and another third will actively endorse and promote contrary ideas. So, thus, we have the government interfering in the marketplace in the holy name of Fairness.

Now, if – and it’s a huuuuuuuge if – IF government absolutely must get involved in the private sector by mandating a minimum wage, a minimum cost of labor, fine and good. Continue as planned, amateur Keynesians, and keep marching toward utopia and try not to get too many people unemployed, or at least blame business for acting in their own self-interest for increased-minimum-wage-related unemployment.

But I have two young daughters. One will be looking for work in two or three years. Part-time, first-time, summer job type work. In order to have her find a job (mostly for the experience), since no employer will pay an inexperienced teen $15/hour, why not create a new category of employee: the starter worker, with a starter worker wage.

We can even capitalize the words in the title. The Starter Worker, with the Starter Worker Wage. We can also super-complicate it, over-define and over-regulate it as government is wont to do. We can set limits, such as: the Starter Worker must be currently attending a secondary school full-time. Or the Starter Worker must not work more than 500 hours a year. Or the Starter Worker must be under the age of 18 by December 31st of the current year. You know, give businesses a lot of tracking busywork to do since government is generously allowing them to hire an inexperienced kid living with mom and dad at $8 an hour.

The Starter Worker Wage.

Has it been proposed, and I missed it? If it hasn’t, why not?

Signed,

Hopper

Armchair Economist